He had an excellent command of Greek and his literary achievements surpass those of any other Russian man of letters of that era ... Of all his works, Cyril's sermon with the triumphant description of spring as the symbol of the Resurrection was the most popular.

"[4] Indeed, this sermon is one of his best known works in which he creates some of his more compelling images like a simile comparing the melting of ice in the spring and Thomas's dissolving doubts about Christ's resurrection: "Ныне зима греховнаа покаянием престала есть и лед невериа богоразумием растаяся... лед же Фомина невериа показанием Христов ребр растаяся."

[Today the winter of sin has stopped in repentance, and the ice of unbelief is melted by wisdom spring appears...] It is often emphasized that Kirill was an accomplished author who exerted influence on subsequent generations of East Slavs (continuing through the 17th century).

[5] Kirill's title the Bishop of Turov is usually agreed to be a later invention arising out of a desire to designate an appropriately high status to the author of extremely popular and influential words.

MacRobert summarizes the state of scholarship: "Even if further early copies of the texts attributed to Kirill of Turov come to light, it may well not be possible to reconstruct his kanon in the form in which he wrote it—supposing that he did write it—or to determine the original wording of his prayers.

Details of contemporary "relevance" yielding specific clues as to time, place, and people (like Kirill's admonition of Feodorek – Bishop Fedor of Rostov called so in depreciation) are rare and skillfully disguised.

Here is an example of Kyrill's humility topos taken from "A Tale of a layman, and on monasticism, and on the soul, and on repentance"; by the most sinful monk Kirill, for Vasilij, abbot of the Caves: "(52) And me: I beg you, do not spurn me like a dog, but remember me even here in your prayers, and there throw me scraps from that holy table, and may all Christians be judged worthy of that life, through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom glory with the Father and with the Holy Spirit, now and ever.

"[9] And another one from: A Sermon for Low Sunday by the unworthy monk Kirill in praise of the resurrection, and concerning the paschal bread, and concerning Thomas's resting of the Lord's ribs: "(1) The Church requires a great teacher and a wise interpreter to adorn the feast.

"The homiletic and exegetic genres are among the 'purest' versions of the rhetorical tradition inherited from Byzantium, relatively uncontaminated in language and structure," as Franklin affirms.

[11] These genres within the tradition of Christian rhetoric became Kievan elite culture, eagerly imitated by Rus' medieval authors who "played the game according to received rules".

[12] As Franklin sees it, Kirill's "self-imposed task was to perpetuate a tradition, not to change or modernize it; to become authoritative by following authority rather than by challenging it".

[13] As Ingunn Lunde points out, Kirill's technique of quotations is based on the convention of the epideictic discourse where the establishment of verbal correspondences and parallels through emphasis and amplification serve to invocation of the authority of the sacred texts.

[15] If we accept the conventional attributions of works to Kyrill of Turov, he can be justly named the most prolific extant writer of Kievan Rus'.